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jQuery 1.5 arrives

After last week's release candidate, the jQuery developers have released on schedule version 1.5 of their JavaScript framework, that simplifies HTML document traversal, event handling, animation and Ajax. This new release of jQuery features a rewrite of the Ajax module which the developers say brings a higher lever of consistency to the XmlHttpRequest methods across platforms. The rewrite has also brought more capability to extend the API and allow the attachment of data handlers, filters and transports; this capability is detailed in an Extending Ajax document.

jQuery traversal performance is greatly improved on manyt browsers; some more than others
Source: John Resig/jQuery.com
Other enhancements include support for Deferred Objects which allow functions to return values where the actual value may not be immediately available, for example, the results from an Ajax request; jQuery.sub() which allows developers to safely modify jQuery methods and major improvements in traversal performance with the .children(), .prev() and .next() methods. There were also 83 bugs fixed and 430 tickets closed in the process of creating jQuery 1.5. The jQuery developers have also revised jQuery's internal build system to standardise on using the NodeJS server-side JavaScript environment.